Chapter Seventy-Six of 'Feather and Glass'- The New World

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Seventy-Six—The New World

“And you honestly felt nothing, Severus?”

Severus holds back a sigh with some effort. He’s sitting in Albus’s office sipping from a cup of warm broth that Albus ordered an elf to bring to him the minute Severus entered. Severus is more than a little suspicious of that care, for all that of course he’s going to accept it.

He shakes his head and sips from the cup one more time before he sets it down, almost empty. “I already told you that I did feel something, Albus. But what it was, I don’t know, and I can’t help you figure out.”

“Why can’t you help me figure it out?”

“Because you won’t tell me enough about what you felt for me to do so.”

Albus stares at him. Severus stares back. He wonders if Albus is surprised by the honesty of the answer or just that Severus would say it to his face.

“I have a particular reason for keeping this secret just now,” Albus answers at last, his words coming as slowly as though he’s trying to cast spells at the same time. “It is—well, I have a theory, but many things could be true if that theory were wrong that would be—disconcerting and hard to deal with.”

“And you don’t want my help to deal with it.”

“Didn’t I just say I did?”

“Then let me rephrase. You want my help less than you want to tell me your secrets.”

Albus leans back and looks out the window in his office, which is enchanted even more than most of Hogwarts’s windows and at the moment shows a snowfield far below, thick with silvery powder. Severus idly watches it blowing around until Albus clears his throat and Severus can look back at him.

“I think,” Albus says slowly, “that it would be best if we simply looked for—interesting effects during the next few days. Ones that linger, or ones that affect magic in a way that you haven’t seen before.”

“Affect magic, Albus? You think something happened that altered the fabric of magic itself?”

“No,” Albus says, too hastily. “Just that we—we need to think about this.”

Severus holds back his sigh and stands. In the end, he probably won’t get much more out of Albus than this, and it was perhaps foolish of him to try. “Very well. I’ll tell you if I see anything related to this in my brewing.”

He’s almost at the door when Albus clears his throat. Severus glances back, but Albus’s gaze is fixed on the ceiling instead of him.

“When did we start distrusting each other, Severus?” Albus whispers, sounding weary. “I thought we could always stand by each other, but it seems that I was wrong.”

“When you started to keep so many secrets that they interfered in whether I could trust you.”

“That isn’t the case.”

“Then explain just one to me. Explain what you think happened, and what kind of effect it would have on the magic of our world in the future.”

Albus is silent. Severus shakes his head and departs.

He does intend to write to Mrs. Zabini this evening so that he can ask her about this and whether it had anything to do with the different reality that the other Harry Potter came from, but he’ll wait a bit. Albus may be watching the school owls to see if Severus does reach out to someone, and Severus needs the trust of his employer for now.

For now. Not for much longer.

*

Aradia stands in the doorway of Blaise’s room, where both Blaise and Harry retreated last night. Ordinarily, she might have said something about that, but after what they went through in the garden, she can’t bring herself to separate them.

They’re curled up together in the middle of Blaise’s massive bed, arms tangled and legs locked. Artemis raises her head from Harry’s shoulder while Aradia stands gazing and waves what Aradia thinks is a hello with her tongue.

Aradia smiles at her and steps back, one hand rising to the amulet Harry gave her that contains the soul of the house.

She thinks they passed through realities where the house doesn’t exist last night. At least, that would explain the stranglehold of love and care that it’s trying to put her through now.

Aradia comes out into the wide white corridor that runs along the back of the house and paces slowly, thinking. She doesn’t know how many other rituals were going on last night, but there was at least one. She could feel that just before Harry started walking his path. She supposes it’s possible that Mrs. Longbottom was working some ritual to save her grandson, or someone was trying to bring the Dark Lord back.

She’ll have to check both possibilities, and make ready to handle them if it’s either.

Something trembles in the corner of her eye, and Aradia glances over in time to see the wards incinerate a Howler. She blinks. It must be decades since the last time she got one of those, although it’s good to see that the wards are still active.

There’s another owl flying after the first one—which has cut indignantly back the way it came—with a red, smoking letter also clenched in its talons. Aradia flicks her fingers to hold back the most active of the wards for a moment, so the Howler can speak just a few words. She’s curious about the voice.

She finds herself in an unexpected struggle with the house, which doesn’t want to let threats near her. Aradia rolls her eyes and projects a sense of peace.

The house isn’t convinced.

The struggle nearly distracts her enough to miss the voice before the wards spring forth and destroy the second Howler. But she does hear Lupin snarl, “I don’t know what you did, but you’ll pay for it!”

Aradia laughs a little. So Lupin and Black have awakened from the trance that her reality bubble cast on them. How delightful. She looks forward to their vengeance, should they decide to pursue it.

Although…

If the bubble’s cracked, that would imply that Black’s returned to the apathetic version of himself he was after Harry cast his original magic.

No wonder Lupin’s incensed.

Aradia wanders towards the room where she can look out into the light of the Suns and think, while a new plan creeps slowly up the back of her mind.

The house hovers protectively around her, watching, and she lets a hand glide along a wall for a second, smiling.

She’s been Blaise’s, and then Harry’s, protector for so long that it’s nice to be reminded someone considers her worthy of protection in turn.

*

Remus stands with his hands clenched in his robe as he stares at Sirius.

His best friend is lying on the bed in the center of the room they’ve found at a magical inn, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He hasn’t moved since Remus woke up. He’s made a few babbling noises, but he’s utterly unconcerned with rising, or eating, or even going to the loo.

And Remus’s memories have come back.

He wants to put his hands over his face and wail. How could Harry do this to them? And what made them forget? It must have something to do with Mrs. Zabini, but Remus doesn’t know why she would have wanted to make them forget instead of die, or leave Harry alone, or—

He doesn’t know what she’s thinking. He doesn’t know that he could ever understood a woman like that.

In a fury, he wrote her a few Howlers, but once he sent them, Remus could admit he might have made a mistake. She’ll probably laugh at them, or respond with her own, much nastier cursed letters. And Remus doesn’t want to waste his time bickering through the post. He wants to take care of Sirius.

Who has something wrong with his soul.

Remus has cast a few spells that would tell him if the problem were with Sirius’s mind or body. And he thinks that Harry’s magic must be the worst possible, the kind that affects the soul, the kind that even Dark wizards beyond You-Know-Who flinch from studying. It makes sense that Mrs. Zabini, in her eagerness to study Dark Arts without suffering the effects herself, would prod Harry into investigating them.

She’s probably observing the results right now. And laughing.

Remus grits his teeth. Doing this kind of thing won’t help, admittedly. He turns away from Sirius one more time and begins writing a letter to a Healer Albus mentioned once, who’s studied the effects of the Dementor’s Kiss on living beings.

She might not be able to help them, but Remus will try. And if she can’t, then he’ll ask Albus for another name, and visit the next Healer. And the next, and the one beyond that, and the one still beyond that.

It’s all he has left to do when his other friends are dead and James’s son is so corrupt that he’d do something like this to Sirius.

*

“Mr. Longbottom?”

Neville shivers and glances up. A man is walking towards him, and after a long look, Neville is able to identify him as Headmaster Dumbledore. But he looks a lot different from the last time Neville saw him.

For one thing, his hair is auburn. And his bead is streaked with grey, but not completely white. And he walks with a spring in his step. Not that the Dumbledore Neville knows is cheerful, but he is older.

“Sir?” Neville asks. His voice breaks, and he licks his lips. Dumbledore immediately conjures a cup and then water for him. Neville accepts it and drinks gratefully. “Is there—where am I?”

“Why, Hogwarts, of course.” Dumbledore’s concern is pretty intense, even though he tries to mask it with a smile. “Do you not remember the school?”

“I—I remember the school,” Neville says, more haltingly than he’d like. “But—no offense, sir, you look pretty different in the one I know.” He does wonder if this is his Hogwarts at all, but then why would Dumbledore recognize him?

For a moment, the Headmaster’s eyes widen. Then he smiles. “I did wonder if something happened last night that would result in this,” he murmurs.

“What would that be, sir?” Neville can’t say that he understands the ritual the elves did, or the one Gran was doing, either.

She’s a Squib, now. She can never hurt him again.

Neville can’t repress a faint pulse of satisfaction as he thinks about that.

“I felt realities shift and align themselves last night,” Dumbledore murmurs. “There were—flaws in the web that links the dimensions together. They’d persisted for more than a decade. I wondered if I’d have to expend some magic to heal them, but they shifted back into place with the working that deposited you here.”

“Working?”

Dumbledore nods once. “It’s a bit complicated to explain without the theory, which we can talk about later. But suffice it to say, you’re no longer in the same dimension you were born in, Mr. Longbottom. Breakfast? I find distressing news goes down faster over scones.”

*

“You’re here.”

“I promise, Harry. Yes, I’m here.”

Harry struggled to open his eyes earlier, suddenly worried that he wouldn’t have completed things the right way and the Blaise he saw would be a stranger to him. What if he was angry about Harry sleeping in his bed? What if he just scoffed when Harry said that they needed to do a ritual to get Harry back to his own world? Or called Aradia, and she stared at him with terrible, unfamiliar eyes, too?

But everything is fine. Blaise is smiling at Harry, holding out a hand. Harry takes his hand and squeezes it tight, and Blaise winces a little, but keeps the smile on his face.

“We should go and have breakfast.”

“Breakfast would be welcome,” Artemis says, and crawls onto Harry’s shoulder with part of her body still looped around his arm. “No one has spared a thought for the poor hungry snake since they collapsed into this bed and nearly fell on top of her. No one could possibly do that.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “She’s complaining about being hungry,” he tells Blaise when his boyfriend blinks in inquiry. “Everyone is hungry,” he tells Artemis. “And if you think that you told me last night and I just didn’t hear, I’d argue against that. I didn’t hear because I was asleep, and you didn’t say it because you were asleep.”

“You don’t know that.”

But Artemis always sounds petty and childish when she’s been caught out in a lie, and she’s doing the same thing now, turning her head away from Harry and refusing to look at him. Harry laughs and touches her hand, then glances at Ignis, who’s peeking out of Blaise’s robe pocket.

“Ignis is fine, too?”

“Yes, as far as I know. I don’t feel any difference in the connection with him, and I think I would after last night.” Blaise smiles at Harry and gestures towards the doorway. “Our breakfast awaits. Let’s go listen to Mother and Bathsheda dissect the ritual.”

Harry grins and bounces out of the bedroom. That honestly sounds fun.

But he doesn’t forget to reach back for Blaise’s hand, and Blaise doesn’t forget to walk beside him, or kiss him in a shadowed alcove that ought to be out of sight for most of the people they could pass.

*

“I—don’t understand how this could have happened.”

Neville’s sitting with his head in his hands. Across the table from, Dumbledore hums, tilting his hand back and forth as if he’s holding something invisible in it that keeps rolling from side to side.

“I don’t think most people do understand the hows and whys of dimension travel,” Dumbledore says, his voice a little distant but kind. “But it has undoubtedly happened. The theory document I was reading this morning, when I sensed your presence at the gates, indicates that it’s the most likely explanation, at least.”

“It’s not—time travel?”

Dumbledore shakes his head at once. “Isn’t it 1995 in your dimension? And I know you, Mr. Longbottom. You’re the son of Frank and Alice Longbottom.”

That brings up something Neville hasn’t considered. “Is there another version of me here?” he whispers, his voice shaking.

“Alas, no. The other version of you died two years ago at the hands of Sirius Black.”

Neville stares at him blankly. Dumbledore just keeps looking back at him, kind and patient, but steely.

“How?” Neville whispers, finally, barely keeping it from being a shout. “He—he isn’t a criminal!” Then he remembers what the version of Black in his world did, and has to struggle to keep down his breakfast. “I mean—the man I knew wasn’t—he wasn’t—”

He claps his hands over his mouth and sits there with his shoulders shaking. He really wishes Alissa was here right now, so he could hug her, and know there’s at least one person in this world who cares about him.

“I don’t know what he was like in your world,” Dumbledore says, very quietly. “Here, Sirius Black was a long-time traitor to his friends and the whole of our side of the war with Voldemort. But he hid it for years, managed to blame someone else for his initial betrayal, and only got caught because he was meeting another servant of Voldemort on the grounds. You stumbled across the meeting and tried to report it. He murdered you with his bare hands and fled for his life.”

Neville closes his eyes and leans his chin on the table for a moment. They’re in a small room off Dumbledore’s office that he never knew about in his own world, that contains a table and chairs and a cupboard with some silverware in it and almost nothing else.

“I’m so sorry,” Dumbledore murmurs. “I imagine it must be a great shock to learn that another version of you died that way.”

“I—yeah.” Neville leans back from the table. He ate a bowl of porridge and a bunch of scrambled eggs, but right now, he couldn’t be less hungry if he tried. “How do you know what happened? I mean, if the other me died.”

“I caught up to Sirius Black.” Dumbledore inclines his head a little. “And then I broke through the Occlumency barriers that he had kept up before that, which had kept me from sensing who he really was. He did explain everything to me before he died.”

Neville nods slowly. He supposes that he should be glad that the other version of him got justice, even though he also thinks it’s horrible that it happened at all.

He decides that he’s not going to ask if Dumbledore killed Black.

“I—what happened to his parents? My parents.” Neville doesn’t think that he could bring himself to go to another Frank and Alice Longbottom and ask them to accept him, not after meeting with his real parents in the afterlife, and not when these two lost their son. But he would like to at least know they’re alive.

“They’re in St. Mungo’s,” Dumbledore says, as gently as he probably can. “They were tortured by the Lestranges, who were searching for information on how to resurrect Voldemort. They’re alive, but without their minds.”

Neville closes his eyes for a long moment. He mourns for a second for this other Neville, raised by his Gran, too.

But he doesn’t know that she was as bad here as she was in his dimension. For the sake of poor dead Neville, he’ll hope that she wasn’t.

What an odd thing to be grateful for.

He opens his eyes and leans back in his chair as he stares up at Dumbledore. “What are we going to do, then, sir?” he asks. “It doesn’t seem as if I have any place here. I didn’t mean to come here, and I don’t have any plan. And no family, either.”

“You didn’t,” Dumbledore says. He’s tapping his wand against the table, in a motion that should make Neville nervous, but he finds it relaxing instead. “But you’re wrong about not having any family. Your great-aunt Roseanna is alive.”

“Huh?”

“Your great-aunt Roseanna,” Dumbledore says, with a curious glance at Neville. “Your grandmother’s sister. Did she die before you were born in your world?”

“I don’t know if she ever lived at all. Gran made me learn the Longbottom genealogy practically by heart, and hers, too. I—don’t remember a Roseanna anything.”

Dumbledore half-smiles. “Then perhaps we shall visit Roseanna Gray, and see if she would be willing to take you in.”

Neville swallows. It’s a painful thought. Even if Madam Gray is willing, it doesn’t mean that she isn’t exactly like Gran.

But a hope grows in his heart, nevertheless.

*

Augusta stands outside the gates of Longbottom Manor, hammering her hands steadily against the metal.

No one moves, and no one answers her. She’s already tried calling the elves until her throat is hoarse. Not one of them has answered. Of course, long ago, Augusta told them never to respond to the call of a Squib. Algernon had confessed to her that he’d had a Squib cousin, and Augusta had shuddered at the thought of what they might consider themselves entitled to.

Now, she wants to scream at them. But she’s already tried insults and commands. Nothing’s worked.

More doxies with honey, she thinks, and steps back from the gates, taking a long moment to smooth down her hair and relax her shoulders. She tries to imagine what she looks like, and ends up wrinkling her nose. Probably terrible.

But it’s worth a try.

“Alissa?” she asks, making her voice as soft and sweet as possible. “I’d like to speak with you, please.”

It takes long enough that Augusta is sure it’s failed again. But then Alissa appears before her, staring at her with wide eyes.

She says nothing. Augusta is the one who has to clear her throat and take the lead. “Do you recognize me, Alissa?”

“Alissa is recognizing you.”

She doesn’t say “Mistress Longbottom.” It makes Augusta’s heart clench. But she did respond to the call, which must mean that Augusta’s orders about Squibs were less restrictive than she thought they were.

Augusta swallows air. “Can you take me in through the gates, please?”

“No Squibs is to be visiting Longbottom Manor.”

That was what she said, on a summer morning long ago after Algernon told her the awful truth. Augusta swallows again. She can probably work her way around this, if she thinks carefully. Alissa is already obeying the letter of the law and not the spirit, so she ought to be sympathetic to Augusta’s attempts to do the same thing.

“I wouldn’t be visiting, though. I would be staying. Because this is my home.”

“No Squibs can be inheriting anything from Longbottom Manor.”

“I don’t need to inherit anything, because no one is dead.” Alissa leans away from her, and Augusta forces sweetness into her voice the way she used to shake jam from the bottom of the jar when she was a child. “I just—want to stay. Please? Open the gates for me?”

“How is you to be doing anything? Everything in the Manor is requiring magic. Even the fires, to light them.”

Yes, Augusta remembers that, now that she’s thinking. But it doesn’t matter. Not when she knows she has to get back in there and start looking through the library’s ancient books for a way to reverse the loss of her magic.

Frank.

Augusta pushes away the memory of his betrayal and summons a tight smile for Alissa’s benefit. “You can do things for me.”

“No, we cannot.”

“You came out here and spoke to me,” Augusta says, and her voice gets sharp despite herself. She holds her breath for a moment, and then speaks in a more reasonable tone. “You can do more than that if you want to.”

“Mistress Longbottom is commanding us not to.”

“Mistress Longbottom is me, you fool!”

Alissa’s large ears twitch, and she takes a step forwards. Augusta bends down near her, thinking that Alissa might be about to whisper some secret that she doesn’t want the other elves to hear.

Alissa’s voice is soft and sweet, like the chime of distant bells, as she says, “Not anymore.”

And then Alissa vanishes with a violent pop, and the gates of the Manor shimmer and grow dim. Augusta lunges forwards, recognizing the defensive protocols, but she can’t stop them. The wards hide the manor from sight, and the house vanishes.

The same protections that she put into place so long ago, when she thought Algie’s Squib cousin might show up at any moment.

Augusta screams in frustration and slams her hands against empty air. She knows the metal of the gates is there, but she can’t touch it. She can’t do anything but spin around in space that shouldn’t be empty but is, to someone who’s now a Squib.

Like she is.

The bitterness fills her mouth and makes her want to spit. But she’s never done anything so undignified in her life. She holds back the impulse and simply stands with her hands closed into fists, breathing hard.

Every option she can think of to alert someone to what’s happened—Albus, particularly—has something wrong with it. She can’t Apparate. She can’t cast a Patronus with the message. She could try summoning the Knight Bus, but she doesn’t think it’ll come to the call of a dead wand.

She tries anyway, just in case, but nothing happens.

The only choice she really has to is to walk to the nearby small village of Llewellyn’s Ward. It has a few magical families scattered among the Muggles. She’ll explain it to them as a magical sickness and get them to send an owl for her to Albus, or let her use their Floo. Squibs can use Floos, can’t they?

She doesn’t know. She never bothered to learn anything about them after giving the orders to shut Algie’s cousin out of the house.

Her hands tremble, but she folds them and starts calmly walking. She’ll do it, that’s all.

And then Frank will find that he can’t hide from her.

*

Albus stands staring down at the shards of silver lying on the floor of his office. The instrument that tracked Neville’s life-force cracked sometime early this morning, while he slept and couldn’t watch it.

Has Aradia killed him, then?

Albus shakes his head. He doesn’t know. But it’s important that he find out what happened at once.

It doesn’t matter how much Harry and Aradia hate Neville. He’s still the one who defeated Voldemort—

Then a stabbing pain moves through his head, and Albus clutches his temples. His hands are shaking as he clamps them to his ears. He can hardly breathe as the pain and the knowledge tunnel through him at the same moment.

Neville Longbottom is not the Boy-Who-Lived.

He didn’t survive that night. Augusta brought him back with necromancy.

Albus finds himself lying on the floor of his office, his hands over his eyes, moaning, as the waves of pain wash through him again and again.

When it retreats, he doesn’t know exactly what happened on that night at Godric’s Hollow, but he knows what didn’t happen.

Albus shakily forces himself back to his feet. He heals a few bruises and bloody spots with Episkey, but shakes his hand when he feels the pain from his hip. He’ll have to go to Madam Pomfrey and get that looked at.

And he’ll have to cope with the knowledge that’s flooded him. With the fact that Augusta lied, and is a practitioner of Dark Arts, and she’s the one who’s been raising Neville. Who knows what he’s picked up from her?

With the knowledge that…

They have no one who can defeat Voldemort, and the prophecy must have gone wild.